Something special is happening in Orlando. This unexpected hotbed of Jazz music is supplied by a surprising source: the Disney corporation. In the house band of an Orlando Jazz club, a little ex-Disney magic has sparked with local talent, and the album Falling Feels Like Flying, by local musician John Korbeland producer Mark Falchook, will be released in January 2024.

Orlando is full of musicians with a history of producing and playing music for Disney productions, their world-class skill spreading into the surrounding music scene. This is how John met Mark Falchook. It just happened that John was thinking about getting serious with a music career after a twenty-year hiatus from touring. He requested Mark’s assistance in creating a one-time Christmas single, but the recording session generated such enthusiasm that they kept collaborating, producing additional tracks throughout the past year. The result is John’s first full album.

John‘s an old soul in the music scene, with a sound that straddles the traditional jazzy tones of Michael Bublé and the chiller side of classic rock pioneered by the likes of Sting and Steely Dan. John spent his college years performing solo, then toured with a variety of bands in the Southeast before refocusing on a 9-to-5 business career that lasted two decades. The music never left him, though. Now, John finds himself in a technological new age defined by indie music on Spotify. Spotting an opportunity to start again, this time on his own terms, John got back in the game with a 2017 EP on Spotify.

John’s 2020 single, Bourbon Street Taps, had been his most successful release. With hundreds of thousands of plays across streaming platforms and a music video screened at multiple film festivals, it was just the boost John needed to get into the studio for an album. The first single for that album, “First Christmas Loving You,” has become his new top-played single.

The track channels the kind of jazz that defines the great Christmas classics; its piano is calm but very awake, John’s voice casually confident. It’s a song that calls for low lights and a glass of wine. It’s a song that would fit into a classy playlist with artists like Donal Fagen, Al Jarreau, Sting, and Bublé.

The forthcoming album, Falling Feels Like Flying, promises to have a variety of tones, including the more playful and energetic bounce that John brought to Bourbon Street Taps back in 2020. The nine original songs, produced by Falchook and featuring local musicians from Orlando’s jazz scene, will give plenty of opportunity to show off what John Korbel‘s voice can do. He can collaborate alongside the instruments, or he can rise above them to give the song a surprising energy with his powerful vocal range. Come January, Falling Feels Like Flying will, for the first time, give John Korbel the broad canvas his voice has always deserved.